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Making tortilla chips at home is a relatively simple, yet somewhat time consuming endeavor. Anyone who tells you differently is lying. The reality of the situation is that you can purchase tortilla chips that are completely adequate for holding toppings at Costco for close to what it would cost to make your own.

Why would anyone take the time to make tortilla chips?

Dinosaur Chips

To get Dinosaur Chips, of course!!

My Little Man loves dinosaurs and nachos. Combine his two loves and get dinachos!

Here is a quick tutorial on how to make tortilla chips into fun shapes:

Grab some corn tortillas from the grocery store. Don’t get the weird gluten free, no calorie, organic, raw corn tortillas. They don’t cook up well. Also grab a large cookie cutter. We have a set of large dinosaur cutters that I use for cookies, sandwiches, and other random things that need to be shaped like a dinosaur.

I use the following method for cutting out tortillas:

Place the tortilla over the cookie cutter.

Use a rolling pin to get enough pressure to cut the tortilla. Tortillas are tough little buggers.

Ta-da!

Excuse the poor photography…

When all of your dinosaurs are cut out, fry the tortillas up in oil (I use canola) at 350 for 2-3 minutes or until lightly golden. They will get a little darker after removed from the oil. I have a little deep fryer, but a pan with a few inches of oil would work just fine.

Avoid crowding the pan to ensure the dinosaurs are wrinkle free!

Drain them on paper towels and lightly salt before storing them in Ziplocs for later use.

I fry up all the scraps of tortilla when I am done with the dinosaurs. As a special treat (for myself!), I will toss them with cinnamon sugar.

YUM!

Chips cut into special shapes are great as a treat for kids, but would also be a nice addition to a themed party!

Husband recently took a couple days off of his job to engage in heavy manual labor around the house. Most epic of his labors was the building of our fire pit. This is not a DIY for anyone who isn’t comfortable lifting heavy objects or really big projects. But, for Husband, this was a labor of love.

I take no credit for this project as I did nothing more than squirt a few lines of adhesive one night. Getting the contractor adhesive out of the massive caulk gun was a challenge for me and I threw in the towel pretty quickly.

Don’t judge, it was really thick and sticky.

The biggest challenge of this project was the massive amount of heavy materials needed. The blocks were about 10-20 lbs each, and there were 150 of them total. The driver who delivered our gravel indicated that the total weight was close to 6 tons. If you aren’t big and strapping, this whole thing could take a very, very long time. Consider yourself warned.

Husband chose to dig out a portion of our backyard. Our pit sits in a little clearing in our yard. The fire ring is 4 feet in diameter and the total area is about 12 feet. Husband removed the sod and some dirt to accommodate three inches of gravel for the main area of the ring and an extra three inches for the fire pit. There was a large, level circle at three inches below the lawn and an inner circle that was an additional three inches below the larger circle.

When completing a task like this, it is really important to level everything, all the time. The inner circle must be level, the outer circle must be level, all of the blocks that are set must be level. Level, level, level!!! The picture below shows the inner ring after it was filled with a layer of gravel because it’s hard to tell the difference in the levels of the two areas when there isn’t any contrast!

The fire ring was built first. It was constructed with landscaping blocks (without a lip) and refractory cement.

Blocks for Fire Ring. No Lip.

Husband used a couple Youtube videos and a little common sense to figure out how to put everything together. Some of the videos suggested excavating the lawn, some recommended gravel, some suggested adhesive, some suggested sand. We decided to be thorough and do it all. A base of gravel was laid and tamped down in the deeper hole for the fire ring. In a circle, where the blocks would sit, a base of sand was laid, tamped, and leveled. Finally, refractory cement was used as an adhesive. Husband said the refractory cement was truly awful to work with, but it is specifically made to adhere blocks together in high heat situations, like a fire pit.

Leveled Gravel and Sand Provide the Base

Each block and the whole ring was leveled.

Each Block was Leveled

As the courses were built up, Husband was sure to leave some gaps in the blocks to allow proper air flow to the fire.

Notice the Slight Gaps in the Blocks

Completed Fire Ring

After the ring was completed, the retaining wall is constructed of basic retaining wall blocks.

Retaining Wall Blocks. Lip.

To help keep the first course level, we put up a masonry line, which is a level line to use as a guide. After we put out the line, we spray painted it onto the dirt behind the blocks.

A Masonry Line Will Help Keep Everything Level

The blocks were placed on a base of sand that was leveled and tamped down, much like the fire ring. Each block was also leveled as it was set down and lightly tapped into place.

Level and Tap Each Block Into Place

Each block was adhered to the two blocks below it with two strips of contractor adhesive. I don’t have a picture of this and it isn’t necessary, but we anticipated kids climbing on the wall and adults sitting on it, so we added the adhesive for extra security. After each course was set, the area between the blocks and the soil was back filled with gravel. Be sure to back fill with gravel after each course is set to ensure proper drainage.

Back Fill with Gravel

As you can see from the photos, we only used a maximum of four courses of blocks, so we were able to get away without using any special landscape fabric or drainage holes or anything like that (whew). If you have a higher wall, follow the instructions on wall construction from your block supplier or manufacturer.

Four Courses of Blocks

After the wall was completed, the entire area was tamped well and leveled.

The Hand Tamper – Husband’s Least Favorite Tool!

To finish everything off, 3 inches of gravel was added to the entire area. It was tamped again.

Fire Pit Complete

If you look closely, you can see that Husband used some extra blocks to create a little entrance to the ring. I think it looks beautiful!

Here is my Swiffer Wet Jet hack. You could either take this as being ingenious and will be totally impressed or you will read this and just be floored by how lazy I am. Either way, it works well enough that my husband is no longer complaining that I won’t but new Swiffer pads.

First, if you have a Swiffer Wet Jet, there is no reason to buy new refills. If you boil an empty Swiffer bottle cap side down for about 5 minutes the cap will twist right off. Grip the piping hot bottle with a oven mitt or heat proof pad to avoid singeing your fingers and voila! It comes off without a struggle. I refill with diluted Pine-Sol, but you can refill it with whatever floor cleaner you want.

Second, instead buying the pads, microfiber cleaning clothes work miracles on every type of surface. I have seen plenty of tutorials on cutting clothes to fit the Swiffer. The microfiber clothes will stick to the Velcro on the Swiffer without any extra work but most clothes are too large and will trail behind the Swiffer, making it difficult to mop without everything getting wrinkly and lumped up. So lame.

Ugh! Extra Cloth Just Gets in the Way!

You could either cut the clothes to fit the Swiffer and sew a hem to keep them from unraveling (which is a lot of work) or you could do this:

Genius I tell you. Slip a rubber band over the Swiffer and stuff the extra cloth under it.

Every few months, I will buy a package of fresh basil. I love fresh basil. But, honestly, who can eat more than a few leaves at a time? To make sure none of the fresh herb goes to waste, I will take a moment to process that basil to prepare it for future marinara use.

After stripping and rinsing all the leaves, it is a simple task to drop them in the food processor with a few cloves of garlic and some olive oil.

First, measure the basil. Then calculate (yes, using math) the amount of oil and garlic you need.

In this instance, I had 2 cups of fresh basil. My favorite marinara recipe uses about 1/4 cup of olive oil and 6 garlic cloves per cup of basil. So, I added .5 cups olive oil and 12 garlic cloves for 2 cups of basil.

Everything into the food processor. Process until the garlic and basil are chopped, of course.

Done.

If you are going to use my favorite marinara recipe adapted from Mom on a Mission, divide based on the number of cups of basil. In this case, there were 2 cups of basil in my processor, so I divided it into 2 equal portions.

One half went to make marinara right away. The other went into the FREEZER.

When you add garlic to olive oil, you MUST freeze, cook, or eat immediately. DO NOT just stick it in your refrigerator for later use.

Garlic + Olive Oil + Basil + Freezer= Yum.

Garlic + Olive Oil + Basil + Time in the fridge = Botulism Poisoning!

Seriously. Freeze, Eat, or Cook.

If you freeze, then the next time you want to make some marinara, you have half of the ingredients all ready to go!